At Summerhill Academy in Bristol our year 5’s and 6’s have been learning their times tables to various pop songs – Mamma Mia, Don’t Stop Believing, Happy etc.  Initially these were chosen by me, but as the children got more into the project they started making suggestions and then wrote their own songs.  In some cases I helped decipher the children’s ideas, and in other cases children did the songwriting on their own and came back with a complete song that needed no work from me at all.

Although I am a piano player, you don’t need to play a musical instrument to run this project – you can just download the music files and play them to your class.  You need 3 files to teach each song

• the lyrics file
• the final sound file – so the children can hear how the lyrics fit to the music
• the rehearsal sound file – with the instrumental backing but no vocals

I have put the files for each song in a separate blog post in the “Teacher Resources” category.  Either click “Teacher Resources” on the menu bar at the top of the page, or this link

I have set up this website to share all the resources and to make links with other schools.  Please download them, use them and let me know how it goes.  If your children want to create their own songs please do record them and upload them to this website so we can hear them and play them to our children!  And let me know if you want to do a shared Skype lesson/assembly so our children can sing the songs to each other.